P Piranha said…
Even if those favoring steppe movements into India are proven wrong by aDNA, there is still no reason to blame them for their conclusions at this stage.

Let’s look at all the data. The oldest case of R1a-z93, which the vast majority of Asian R1a, including South Asian R1a, falls under, comes from the Poltavka Outlier sample, 4925-4536 BP, from the the Pontic Steppe–probably a migrant from other areas of Europe, as it differs from other Poltavka samples in Y-haplogroup and by having what people here term EEF (Early European Farmer) ancestry. The Poltavka samples resemble Yamnaya and do not carry such ancestry. It is positive for one downstream marker, z94, implying that z93 arose quite shortly before among its ancestors. This matches very precisely the estimated date of divergence of z93, ~5000 years ago, from Underhill et al 2014 and from Yfull. This sample does not possess either Iran Neolithic ancestry or South Asian ancestry (ASI); it is lower in CHG than the Poltavka samples. Therefore we have one sample of z93 from Eastern Europe several generations after its estimated date of origin that possesses no ancestry from South or Central Asia.

Poltavka outlier is a mix of Yamnaya ancestry and Early European Farmer ancestry, resembling the Corded Ware samples, which occur just before it temporally and beside it geographically. One individual from Esperstedt Corded Ware is R1a1a1-m417, the parent haplogroup of z93.

Then we have I0419/SVP27 from Potapovka culture – 2200-1900 BC, RISE392 from Sintashta culture, also at 2126-1896 BC, and then several from the Srubnaya culture. All of these samples are z93+, none have Iran Neolithic or ASI ancestry, and all demonstrate whole or partial genetic continuity with the prior samples.

From Metspalu et al 2011, the ASI component appears, in fact, to be slightly older in populations of Uttar Pradesh than in South Indian Dravidians. One of David’s articles contains a slide from Johannes Krause which seems to show that the Indus Valley genomes are very high in ASI, more than half; given that these researchers (Haak is with Krause in Max Planck) have so many unpublished results I’m inclined to trust them. The Iran Hotu genomes seem to possess a trace of eastern ancestry. All this points to an old provenance for ASI in northern parts of the Subcontinent and Southern Central Asia.

The Iranians show that the major genetic change after the Chalcolithic in Iran is an increase in ancestry from Sintashta, Andronovo or Scythian-type peoples. So at least one group of Indo-Iranian speakers have certainly received a pulse of admixture from those steppe groups which carry early R1a-z93.
April 13, 2017 at 8:55 PM

P Piranha said…
The comparisons between high and low caste populations in India using Matt’s method and formal statistics requested by RK also show that high castes are distinguished by strong affinity to the Sintashta and Andronovo populations that Kurganist linguists have postulated were the original Indo-Aryan speakers, and which carry R1a-z93.

Jaydeep has offered well-crafted arguments that there was a mesolithic introgression of West Eurasian populations into India, or in the opposite direction from the Indus Valley to the Caucasus and West Asia. However, there is no evidence thus far, either from autosomal genetics or haploid markers, for more recent genetic expansions from India, even if there was a CHG expansion in the Mesolithic. Metspalu does not find a recent, non-Mesolithic contribution of Southern genomes to the Caucasus and West Asia. So there is no evidence right now of post-Mesolithic movements of Indian populations into the Steppe. Since the time depth of Indo-European is not mesolithic, even if Indo-European was spoken by CHG peoples, they diverged from Indians after the glacial melt and South or South-Central Asia could not be the Indo-European homeland.

It is still possible that the samples from the Indus Valley may falsify the AIT. But until then, the picture seems, overwhelmingly, to suggest the AIT. Accusations of bias directed at Davidski and the other commenters as regards the interpretation of the evidence available now seem to me to be quite unfounded.
April 13, 2017 at 8:56 PM

Ric Hern said…
Regarding R1 Y-DNA. It is as if some people never heard of Mal’ta Buret in Southern Siberia +-26 000 years ago which was R*.

So taking into account the desertification of Central Asia during the Last Glacial Maximum it is hard to see a migration from the South to the North during this period. So Haplogroup R and its immediate ancestors were trapped in Southern Siberia for a while. Deglaciation only started from about 20 000 years ago and within an estimated 2000 years after that R1b formed.

This tells me that R1 was firmly established in Siberia before Deglaciation commenced and those people firmly adapted to the Northern Climate and its challenges during this isolation.

The Steppe Tundra environment stretched from France to Siberia so it is not unlikely that R1 people spread as far as Europe during the LGM or just before Deglaciation caused the Volga River to form a Massive Delta which would have been very difficult to cross taking into account the technology of the day.This is why we see some settlements in Ukraine and the Southern Urals at around +-18 000 years ago and eventually Villabruna R1bs in Northeast Italy +-12 000 years ago.
April 14, 2017 at 3:53 AM

Rob said…
@ Ric Hern I’m still wondering how directly relevant Mal’ta is, and it seems doubtful that „Haplogroup R and its immediate ancestors were trapped in Southern Siberia”. Quite the contrary, the current data to me suggests that R-lineages became extinct in Siberia around the LGM, because out of 30 or so Mesolithic & Neolithic lineages in the Altai, mostly are Q and N (2 were R1a). This doesn;t look like a zone where R1 was ‚trapped’.

It also seems that your assertion that central Asia were a deserted wilderness isnt quite on point, at least not all of it, given the recent finding of a LUP individual from Kyrgysztan (which is being analysed)..

I’m also confused about what you’re trying to communicated about Ukraine, and it having anything to do with Siberia – the Black Sea was it’s own refuge zone. lastly, I would treat the post-LGM history of R1b and R1a distinctly, for a clear picture. And Ultimately, there is no way to link Villabruna to Siberia.
April 14, 2017 at 4:29 AM

Davidski said…
Affinity between MA1 and ancient steppe populations, which are obviously directly ancestral to modern Europeans, is extremely high. This doesn’t look like a signal from an extinct and irrelevant population.

I’d be shocked if any sample from Central Asia, like Kyrgysztan, shows even higher affinity to the same ancient steppe groups.

And if it doesn’t, then even if it belongs to R, like MA1, there won’t be any reason to assume that R1a and R1b on the ancient steppe and in modern Europe came from Central Asia rather than Siberia.
April 14, 2017 at 4:48 AM

Rob said…
Hhmm. Well, the evidence suggests that R1b isn’t from LUP Siberia. R1a is more complex.
But essentially, i think R1b was already in Europe at or after the LGM, whilst R1a might have arrived later, coupled with other ‚eastern’ lineages such as Y hg Q and mtDNA C, which would account for the 35% ANE in EHG, according to the new calculations by Haak et al.
April 14, 2017 at 5:04 AM

Ric Hern said…
@Rob I didn’t say that R1b was from Siberia but its ancestors surely were roaming North of Central Asia during the LGM because Central Asia were very sparsely populated during this time because of Desert like conditions that prevailed until Deglaciation.It was much drier than today with much less fauna to hunt.

And yes they were not totally trapped but the route South for all intensive purposes was blocked by desert. So the only way open was East and West.

Currently there is only evidence for Villabruna as being R1b. The rest of European samples of roundabout the same timeframe and earlier produced I2 mostly but no R.
April 14, 2017 at 5:55 AM

postneo said…
@piranha
„Poltavka outlier is a mix of Yamnaya ancestry and Early European Farmer ancestry, resembling the Corded Ware samples”

So there are two humps for the steppe hypothesis to overcome for both europe and south asia
there is no uniparental match between yamnaya/CW and europe even though there is adna match. On the archeological side there is some support of yamnaya/CW „like” movement to europe.

there is no adna match between poltavka and south asia even though there is common ydna. there is no archeological trail.

of course it may get resolved. But for now there is work to be done in finding the right founding populations. They may not be the same for south asia and europe, but may share some ancestry.

Making a hard association of language to these ancient populations and making a belief system out of that is silly. Yamnaya/CW may have spoken extinct IE dialects or non IE. they may have adopted language from BB GAC. Perhaps they had disparate language groups. the possibilities are endless.
April 14, 2017 at 6:19 AM

Davidski said…
Of course it may get resolved. It’s already resolved. Early Baltic Corded Ware are identical to Yamnaya (with no EEF admixture) and carry R1a-Z645. Yamnaya/CW may have spoken extinct IE dialects or non IE. they may have adopted language from BB GAC. Perhaps they had disparate language groups. the possibilities are endless. No, the possibilities are finite to anyone who understands the data we already have.
April 14, 2017 at 6:27 AM

postneo said…
@david neither cw z645 or yamnaya are good matches for bulk Western European y DNA
April 14, 2017 at 9:03 AM

Davidski said…
@Szkx I think the authors just use old terminology. ANE was called „steppe component” because we thought all of it in Europeans was from the steppe. Now we know ANE predates steppe expansions in Eastern Europe and that is what they want to say. That’s all. They just should use the right name, ANE component. No, they’re talking about the Yamnaya-related admixture estimates from Haak et al., because they mention the 75% figure for Corded Ware.

Corded Ware was estimated to be ~75% Yamnaya-related in Haak et al., not ~75% ANE.

Pre-LNBA ANE admixture outside of the steppe is irrelevant here unless it’s accompanied by exactly the right proportions of EHG and CHG.

So it’s impossible to claim that the Steppe component existed in Europe outside of the steppe prior to the LNBA without CHG being present there, and impossible to claim that the Steppe component existed in Early Neolithic Iran without EHG being present there. And even if present, they have to come in the right proportions.
April 14, 2017 at 3:19 PM

Blogger Ric Hern said…
@Davidski : „population that contributed new alleles to people in the Villabruna Cluster”

Was this populations closer related to Villabrunas or Sutsurblia ? Or did they contribute more towards Villabruna than to Sutsurblia ? Was this population a Native Steppe population or did it migrate from somewhere else, eg. Siberia ?
April 16, 2017 at 11:28 PM

Blogger Davidski said…
Was this populations closer related to Villabrunas or Sutsurblia ? Or did they contribute more towards Villabruna than to Sutsurblia? The Satsurblia cluster (CHG) has significant Villabruna-related and MA1-related ancestry.

The Villabruna-related ancestry probably moved into the Caucasus from the Western Steppe, while the MA1-related ancestry probably mostly moved into the Caucasus via the South Caspian, along with Basal Eurasian ancestry.
April 17, 2017 at 12:01 AM

Blogger Ric Hern said…
@Davidski So MA1-related ancestry did not use a Northern Route from +-Siberia to Europe ?
April 17, 2017 at 1:49 AM

Blogger Ric Hern said…
Could there have been two different routes of MA1-related migrations into the Pontic Caspian Steppe ? One North and the other South of the Caspian ?
April 17, 2017 at 2:06 AM

Blogger Davidski said…
MA1-related ancestry moved via the South Caspian into the Caucasus along with Basal Eurasian ancestry to form CHG, and it moved into Europe without Basal Eurasian ancestry to form EHG.
April 17, 2017 at 2:06 AM

Blogger Ric Hern said…
So MA1-related ancestry within EHG was due to a migration that did not come into contact with Basal Eurasian. So could this point to an Earlier migration towards the West that predated the migration of Basal Eurasian(Baradostian?)types into the Southern Caspian that formed the CHG(Zarzian?) ? Which Culture preceded the Zarzian Culture in the Southern Caspian ?
April 17, 2017 at 2:27 AM

Olympus Mons said…
@Davidski. how would you better describe „Bronze Age steppe ancestry”?
April 20, 2017 at 4:32 AM

Davidski said…
@OM how would you better describe „Bronze Age steppe ancestry”? Basically identical to Yamnaya and early Corded Ware and originating from what is now Ukraine and southern Russia.
April 20, 2017 at 4:42 AM

irjhar007 said…
Basically identical to Yamnaya and early Corded Ware and originating from what is now Ukraine and southern Russia. That’s not possible . Let come the data , all we need is the data .
April 20, 2017 at 4:56 AM

aniasi said…
Davidski, hear me out on this, and see if it changes your model. You seem to be assuming that Iranian speakers were the first steppe arrivals in the Iranian Plateau, but I think there was a definite Indo-Aryan presence beforehand. I am not just talking about the Mitanni, but the fact that there is a substratum of Indo-Aryan in old Iranian languages. As an example, certain words have ‚s’ sounds that should not exist in Iranian, due to a sound shift to ‚h’, but follow an Indo-aryan pattern.

Would it therefore make more sense to look at a two pulse model? You pointed out that some steppe samples look closer to Indo-Aryan, so might these work as a proxy?
April 20, 2017 at 7:12 AM

Arch Hades said…
These people were the world’s first Monotheists..when the ancient Hebrews were still worshiping statues. At some point in time though..it seems that Iranian Monists added duelism to their worldview which formed the basis of Zoroastrianism while the Aryans in India stayed fully Monistic.
April 20, 2017 at 8:34 AM

Coldmountains said…
Zoraosterianism represented an innovative religion with many BMAC elements. Vedic Hinduism was far more conservative. Zoraoster disliked nomadic Iranians. He was from Central Asia but monotheistic Zoraosterianism did not exist there prior to Sassanids.
April 20, 2017 at 10:59 PM

Kurti said…
@Coldmountain There is no reason to believe Zoroaster was from Central Asia. Most and oldest Zoroastrian temples are actually in West Iran. There are no records of Zoroastrians in Western Central Asia and South Asia prior to the expansion of the Achaemenids and following Empires.
Zoroastrianism is a synthesis of Old Mesopotamian and Proto Iranic elements.
April 21, 2017 at 4:23 AM

Coldmountains said…
@Kurti Avesta mentions no place in West Iran . Most of the mentioned places are in modern day Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Avestan language is early East Iranian and was spoken somewhere between modern day Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Zoraosterianism was in the beginning a sect in the eastern Iranian world which later spread in the West Iranic and became more popular there
April 21, 2017 at 6:35 AM

Kurti said…
That is incorrect Coldmountain. And can only be explained with the fact that you interpret some of the mention region as in Central Asia. Avesta barely to never talks about explicit regions which can be pointed to a place. It speaks metaphoric. And I said Zoroastrianim emerged in Western Asia I didn’t say in West Iran. I said it’s parent culture is from West Iran just like Zoroaster but he himself moved out into exile (likely Northeast Iran) to find followers. And many scientists believe the reason why he wrote Avesta in an archaic language like Avesta (which according to them isn’t actually the real language of any known tribe) was to reach as much people as possible and this could explain why there are maybe some regions in Central Asia mentioned in it too. the Zoroastrian cult and all it’s elements are typical Mithraistic and old Mesopotamian.
April 21, 2017 at 6:54 AM

Vara said…
Long time reader, first time posting. Vendidad is not a reliable book for studying Zoroastrianism since it was written during the very late Sassanian period. The book mentions crossbows, stirrups..etc. Also, taking a look at the 16 perfect lands, geographically they don’t make sense (all the way up to Rhaga but not Kerman?). What actually makes sense is that they were the lands that were in constant war/rebellion against the Rashidun and Ummayad Caliphates.

The Yashts and Yasnas are more reliable but they suffer from the same problem since they were written during the Achaemenid period and finished during the Sassanid period. The Yasht mentions three salt lakes and IMO identifying these lakes can tell us where the Zoroastrian homeland is. Now,, it’s known from Middle Persian texts that Kavi Vishtaspa celebrated Zoroastrianism around Lake Frazdan. Middle Persian texts say that it is in Sakastan. However, there is Lake Hrazdan in Armenia, a place close to the Aras river where the Middle Persians thought Zoroaster came from.

Finally, the Gathas don’t say much about where and when Zoroaster lived. However, it does mention a few things like: Horsemen, and metal (not Iron for sure). Weirdly, the warrior caste in the Avesta is not related to charioteers and there is no mention of chariots in the Old Avesta. We know that cavalry existed in Jiroft since 4.6kya, while chariots roughly 4.2kya. The Gathas mention another thing, the farmer-nomad conflict. People take it for guaranteed that this is a conflict between Andronovo and BMAC but not necessarily. Farmer-Nomad conflicts were all over West Asia, like Gutian-Sumerian, Lullubi-Babylonian…etc.

And of course some people above mentioned that CA can’t be the homeland of Zoroastrianism, since pre-Achaemenids it was the homeland of the Dahae and the Scythians. In fact, the first main Zoroastrian city there was built by Cyrus. So in conclusion the Zoroastrian homeland is somewhere around Carmania and Drangiana. Sorry for the long post.
April 21, 2017 at 12:17 PM

Very archaic religion. Pagan Slavs and early Indo-Aryans also believed in One God only and worshiped his manifestations. Kalash goddess Dizane may be related to Slavic Dziewanna (Dievana) and Latin Diana.
April 21, 2017 at 12:20 AM

η Άρτεμις εν Ταύροις της Σκυθίας τιμωμένη; η από μέρους, των ποιμνίων επστάσις. η ότι η αυτη τη σελήνη εστι καί εποχειται ταύροις
Difficult to say how from * diwiana Kalash Dizane came. „Diana (pronounced with long ‚ī’ and ‚ā’) is an adjectival form developed from an ancient *divios, corresponding to later ‚divus’, ‚dius’, as in Dius Fidius, Dea Dia and in the neuter form dium meaning the sky. It is rooted in Indoeuropean *d(e)y(e)w, meaning bright sky or daylight, from which also derived the name of Vedic god Dyaus and the Latin deus, (god), dies, (day, daylight), and ” diurnal”, (daytime). On the Tablets of Pylos a theonym διϝια (diwia) is supposed as referring to a deity precursor of Artemis. Modern scholars mostly accept the identification. The ancient Latin writers Varro and Cicero considered the etymology of Dīāna as allied to that of dies and connected to the shine of the Moon” (Wikipedia). Anyway it seems that Latin Diana is linked to pre-Greek διϝια (diwia), i.e. to the Balkans and western Europe rather than to the Steppes.
April 21, 2017 at 1:24 AM

Nirjhar007 said…
Eastpole, Thanks for the video , I will give it a look .Yes Vedics also suggested everything comes from one , the gods are the different manifestations of the one . You may know this famous line of RV. 1.164.46 :

46 They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa, Agni, and he is heavenly nobly-winged Garutmān. To what is One, sages give many a title they call it Agni, Yama, Mātariśvan.

This is an erroneous translation. Your first Skt. verse corresponds correctly to your second English verse. But your second Skt. verse is mistranslated. Your first English verse in Skt. should be: इन्द्रं मित्रं वरुणमग्निमाहुरथो दिव्यः स सुपर्णो गरुत्मान
April 21, 2017 at 9:32 AM

EastPole said…
@Nirjhar007 “You may know this famous line of RV. 1.164.46

46 They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa, Agni, and he is heavenly nobly-winged Garutmān. To what is One, sages give many a title they call it Agni, Yama, Mātariśvan.”

Yes, I know RV. What do you think about Greek mystery religions, Orphic Hymns like this one:

OF 543: “One Zeus, one Hades, one Helios, one Dionysus one God in all them: why shall I tell you in two ways?”

Looks like there was a common source for Vedic, Hellenic and Slavic religion, poetry, philosophy etc.
April 21, 2017 at 5:29 PM

EastPole said…
@Jijnasu “This doesn’t mean that surya would be thought of as a water god”

But Agni who is identified with Savitar or Surya is also identified with water goddesses Ida and Sarasvati in RV.2.1.11:

“11. You, god Agni, are Aditi for the pious; you, as Hotrā Bhāratī, are strengthened by song. You are Iḍā, bestowing a hundred winters in return for skill; you, o lord of goods, as obstacle-smasher, are Sarasvatī.”

Not kathenotheism but monotheism, one God with many manifestations, many faces. Agni is One God but also is a “Hotar of many faces” (RV. 6.5.2.), is represented often as a policephalic deity , and is identified with many other god which are his manifestations.

But the same was observed among Slavs. The 12th-century German missionary Helmold of Bosau recorded in Chronica Slavorum about Slavic religion:

“They also carve out many deities with two, three, or more heads. But they do not deny that there is among the multiform godheads to whom they attribute plains and woods, sorrows and joys, one god in the heavens ruling over the others. They hold that he, the all powerful one, looks only after heavenly matters; that the others, discharging the duties assigned to them in obedience to him, proceeded from his blood; and that one excels another in the measure that he is nearer to this god of gods.”

One god, not participating in the affairs of this world, which is ruled by his emanations or progeny, whose closeness to the father is the measure of their excellence. The highest God is without evil, without duality, unmoved, not participating.

But the same we see in Greek mystery religions and later in the philosophy of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle or Plotinus.Greek mystery religions came to them from the North, from Thracians and Hyperboreans. It is not a PIE religion, as described by Dumezil, but later development originating north of the steppe and expanding from there. It explains all common things in Slavic, Greek and Indo-Iranian poetry, religion, philosophy etc. PIE theory doesn’t explain it.
April 22, 2017 at 1:20 AM

Abstract
Dramatic events in human prehistory, such as the spread of agriculture to Europe from Anatolia and the Late Neolithic/Bronze Age (LNBA) migration from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, can be investigated using patterns of genetic variation among the people that lived in those times. In particular, studies of differing female and male demographic histories on the basis of ancient genomes can provide information about complexities of social structures and cultural interactions in prehistoric populations. We use a mechanistic admixture model to compare the sex-specifically-inherited X chromosome to the autosomes in 20 early Neolithic and 16 LNBA human remains. Contrary to previous hypotheses suggested by the patrilocality of many agricultural populations, we find no evidence of sex-biased admixture during the migration that spread farming across Europe during the early Neolithic. For later migrations from the Pontic steppe during the LNBA, however, we estimate a dramatic male bias, with ~5-14 migrating males for every migrating female. We find evidence of ongoing, primarily male, migration from the steppe to central Europe over a period of multiple generations, with a level of sex bias that excludes a pulse migration during a single generation. The contrasting patterns of sex-specific migration during these two migrations suggest a view of differing cultural histories in which the Neolithic transition was driven by mass migration of both males and females in roughly equal numbers, perhaps whole families, whereas the later Bronze Age migration and cultural shift were instead driven by male migration, potentially connected to new technology and conquest.

(…)Analyses of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the paternally inherited Y chromosome have lent differential support for the hypothesis that the Neolithic spread of agriculture from Anatolia occurred through a large population migration, rather than a spread of technology (17-21). In general, studies of Y-chromosomal data more than mtDNA
have supported Anatolian migration, which has been interpreted as evidence for male-biased migration of the population that introduced farming. This hypothesis of male-biased migration of farming populations is consistent with ethnographic studies showing a higher frequency of patrilocality in farming than hunter-gatherer populations, as an inheritance model through the paternal lineage would favor the persistence of farming-associated Y chromosomes with more flexibility for the source population of female mates. Isotopic studies from Neolithic European archeological sites suggest more female than male migration on a local scale, supporting the shift to patrilocality in the region (9,22).

Based on archeological and modern-day genetic data, the later migration from the PonticCaspian Steppe has also been hypothesized to be male-biased (23-25). Populations in the region, such as the Yamnaya or Pit Grave culture, are thought to have strong male-biased hierarchy, as inferred by overrepresentation of male burials, male deities, and kinship terms (26). The region is a putative origin for the domesticated horse in Europe, and the culture is known for its use of horse-driven chariots, a potential male-biased mechanism of dispersal into central Europe (26). (…)

Vijay • 5 months ago
I would also like the authors to replace „chariots” by „wheeled vehicles” as chariots have a meaning today that does not correspond to wheeled wagons before Sintashta. Male mediated expansion may suggest extreme violence, but it need not.

Davidski • 7 months ago
Hello authors, Really nice paper. Thanks.
However, it’s extremely unlikely that most of these Bronze Age steppe pastoralists used chariots to crash into Central Europe. I’m guessing you probably meant to say wagons? The most likely suspects in the context of your work, Pit-Grave, Catacomb and Corded Ware, had wagons. The first chariots are found in the Sintashta Culture of the Late Bronze Age Ural steppes, so this is at the tail end of the major population movements from the steppe into Europe. The descendants of Sintashta probably had a major impact on Mycenaean Greece, and may have moved into that part of Europe with the help of chariots, but that’s a different story.

Abstract
Farming and sedentism first appeared in southwestern Asia during the early Holocene and later spread to neighboring regions, including Europe, along multiple dispersal routes. Conspicuous uncertainties remain about the relative roles of migration, cultural diffusion, and admixture with local foragers in the early Neolithization of Europe. Here we present paleogenomic data for five Neolithic individuals from northern Greece and northwestern Turkey spanning the time and region of the earliest spread of farming into Europe. We use a novel approach to recalibrate raw reads and call genotypes from ancient DNA and observe striking genetic similarity both among Aegean early farmers and with those from across Europe. Our study demonstrates a direct genetic link between Mediterranean and Central European early farmers and those of Greece and Anatolia, extending the European Neolithic migratory chain all the way back to southwestern Asia.

Significance
One of the most enduring and widely debated questions in prehistoric archaeology concerns the origins of Europe’s earliest farmers: Were they the descendants of local hunter-gatherers, or did they migrate from southwestern Asia, where farming began? We recover genome-wide DNA sequences from early farmers on both the European and Asian sides of the Aegean to reveal an unbroken chain of ancestry leading from central and southwestern Europe back to Greece and northwestern Anatolia. Our study provides the coup de grâce to the notion that farming spread into and across Europe via the dissemination of ideas but without, or with only a limited, migration of people.

It is well established that farming was introduced to Europe from Anatolia, but the extent to which its spread was mediated by demic expansion of Anatolian farmers, or by the transmission of farming technologies and lifeways to indigenous hunter-gatherers without a major concomitant migration of people, has been the subject of considerable debate. Paleogenetic studies (1⇓⇓–4) of late hunter-gatherers (HG) and early farmers indicate a dominant role for migration in the transition to farming in central and northern Europe, with evidence of only limited hunter-gatherer admixture into early Neolithic populations, but increasing toward the late Neolithic. However, the exact origin of central and western Europe’s early farmers in the Balkans, Greece, or Anatolia remains an open question.

Recent radiocarbon dating indicates that by 6,600–6,500 calibrated (cal) BCE sedentary farming communities were established in northwestern Anatolia at sites such as Barcın, Menteşe, and Aktopraklık C and in coastal western Anatolia at sites such as Çukuriçi and Ulucak, but did not expand north or west of the Aegean for another several hundred years (5). All these sites show material culture affinities with the central and southwestern Anatolian Neolithic (6).

Early Greek Neolithic sites, such as the Franchthi Cave in the Peloponnese, Knossos in Crete, and Mauropigi, Paliambela, and Revenia in northern Greece date to a similar period (7⇓–9). The distribution of obsidian from the Cycladic islands, as well as similarities in material culture, suggest extensive interactions since the Mesolithic and a coeval Neolithic on both sides of the Aegean (8). Although it has been argued that in situ Aegean Mesolithic hunter-gatherers played a major role in the “Neolithization” of Greece (7), the presence of domesticated forms of plants and animals indicates nonlocal Neolithic dispersals into the area.

We present five ancient genomes from both, the European and Asian sides of the northern Aegean (Fig. 1); despite their origin from nontemperate regions, three of them were sequenced to relatively high coverage (∼2–7×), enabling diploid calls using a novel SNP calling method that accurately accounts for postmortem damage (SI Appendix, SI5. Genotype Calling for Ancient DNA). Two of the higher-coverage genomes are from Barcın, south of the Marmara Sea in Turkey, one of the earliest Neolithic sites in northwestern Anatolia (individuals Bar8 and Bar31). On the European side of the Aegean, one genome is from the early Neolithic site of Revenia (Rev5), and the remaining two are from the late and final Neolithic sites of Paliambela (Pal7) and Kleitos (Klei10), dating to ∼2,000 y later (Table 1). Estimates of mitochondrial contamination were low (0.006–1.772% for shotgun data) (Table 1; SI Appendix, SI4. Analysis of Uniparental Markers and X Chromosome Contamination Estimates.). We found unprecedented deamination rates of up to 56% in petrous bone samples, indicating a prehistoric origin for our sequence data from nontemperate environments (SI Appendix, Table S5).

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Uniparental Genetic Systems

The mtDNA haplogroups of all five Neolithic individuals are typical of those found in central European Neolithic farmers and modern Europeans, but not in European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (1). Likewise, the Y-chromosomes of the two male individuals belong to haplogroup G2a2, which has been observed in European Neolithic farmers (3, 10); in Ötzi, the Tyrolean Iceman (11); and in modern western and southwestern Eurasian populations, but not in any pre-Neolithic European hunter-gatherers (12). The mitochondrial haplogroups of two additional less well-preserved Greek Mesolithic individuals (Theo1, Theo5; SI Appendix, Table S6) belong to lineages observed in Neolithic farmers from across Europe; consistent with Aegean Neolithic populations, unlike central European Neolithic populations, being the direct descendants of the preceding Mesolithic peoples who inhabited broadly the same region. However, we caution against over-interpretation of the Aegean Mesolithic mtDNA data; additional genome-level data will be required to identify the Mesolithic source population(s) of the early Aegean farmers. (…)

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101109172344.htm
DNA reveals origins of first European farmers
Haak W, Balanovsky O, Sanchez JJ, Koshel S, Zaporozhchenko V, et al. Ancient DNA from European Early Neolithic Farmers Reveals Their Near Eastern Affinities. PLoS Biology, 2010; DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000536
Date: November 10, 2010
Source: University of Adelaide
Summary: A team of international researchers has resolved the longstanding issue of the origins of the people who introduced farming to Europe some 8,000 years ago. A detailed genetic study of one of the first farming communities in Europe, from central Germany, reveals marked similarities with populations living in the Ancient Near East (modern-day Turkey, Iraq and other countries) rather than those from Europe.

Genetic matrilineal distances between 55 modern Western Eurasian populations and Neolithic Linear Pottery Culture (LBK) samples. Mapped genetic distances are illustrated between 55 modern Western Eurasian populations and the total of 42 Neolithic LBK samples (A) or the single graveyard of Derenburg (B). Black dots denote the location of modern-day populations used in the analysis. The coloring indicates the degree of similarity of the modern local population(s) with the Neolithic sample set: short distances (greatest similarity) are marked by dark green and long distances (greatest dissimilarity) by orange, with fainter colors in between the extremes.

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In this study, we present 84 mtDNA and 9 Y chromosomal DNA data from Mesolithic (6200–6000 BC) and Neolithic specimens of the STA and LBKT from western Hungary and Croatia. Spanning a time transect of the Hungarian Neolithic in Transdanubia over approximately 900years (ca 5800– 4900 BC) allowed us to gain detailed insight into the spread of farming from the Near East.
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The haplotype of the Mesolithic skeleton from the Croatian Island Korcˇula could be assigned to mtDNA haplogroup U5b2a5 (electronic supplementary material, dataset S3). Sub-haplogroup U5b has been shown to be common in hunter–gatherer communities across Europe [28–30,32,33, 47,48]. Contrary to the low mtDNA diversity observed in Central/North European hunter–gatherers [28–30], we identify a higher variability in early farming communities of the Carpathian Basin including haplogroups N1a, T1, T2, J, K, H, HV, V,W, X, U2, U3, U4 and U5a (electronic supplementary material, table S1). Previous studies described haplogroups N1a, T2, J, K, HV, V, W and X as being characteristic for the Central European LBK and suggested these as the mitochondrial ‘Neolithic package’ that had reached Central Europe in the sixth millennium BC [38,39]. Interestingly, most of these eight haplogroups
show comparable frequencies between the STA, LBKT and LBK, and represent the majority of mtDNAvariation in each culture (STA ¼ 86.36%, LBKT ¼ 61.54%, LBK ¼ 79.63%) with similar haplotype diversity (STA ¼ 0.97674, LBKT ¼ 0.95277, LBK ¼ 0.95483). By contrast, hunter–gatherer haplogroups are rare in the STA and both LBK groups (electronic supplementary material, table S1). Haplogroup H was not included in the Neolithic package, because it has also been found in pre-agricultural context in Iberia [48]. However, the low resolution of HVS-I does not allow to distinguish between H lineages of Neolithic or preNeolithic origins in Transdanubia and would require whole mitochondrial genome analyses.
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(b) Y chromosomal DNA
We analysed 33 Y-haplogroup defining SNPs located on the non-recombining part of the Y chromosome (NRY), using multiplex [38] and singleplex PCR. We successfully generated unambiguous NRY SNP profiles for nine male individuals (STA ¼ 7, LBKT ¼ 2; electronic supplementary material, datasets S3 and S5). Three STA individuals belong to the NRY haplogroup F* (M89) and two specimens can be assigned to the haplogroup G2a2b (S126), and one each to G2a (P15) and I2a1 (P37.2). The two investigated LBKT samples carry haplogroups G2a2b (S126) and I1 (M253). Furthermore, incomplete SNP profiles of eight specimens potentially belong to the same haplogroups—STA: three G2a2b (S126), two G2a (P15) and one I (M170); LBKT: one G2a2b (S126) and one
F* (M89).
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